Rampage Killer
murderous episode in a pharmacy.]] "Rampage Killer" is an umbrella term for Spree Killer or Mass Murderer, a person who kills multiple people in a short period of time, with no cooling off period or a very brief one. There are only minor differences between the two terms, as detailed below. Definition The spree killer has usually become alienated from society and no longer feels any connection with the rest of humanity. They may feel that the world has come crashing down on them and that the only solution is death. They will feel that their own lives are over, and aim to take as many people with them as they can. Another type of spree killer (the so-called "classic type") is the "killer on the run", someone who commits murders or potentially deadly attacks while evading capture by the law. Examples of this type include Allan Legere, Andrew Cunanan and Florence Rey. Once their killing spree is over, subjects of this type most often either commit suicide or force law enforcement to use deadly force against them ("suicide by cop"). They prefer death over the prospect of indefinite incarceration. The mass murderer, while being nearly identical, differs in the fact that their murders will occur in one place. A spree killer may "visit" multiple locations, sometimes over the course of several days. Victimology Both types may target a certain demographic, or even specific targets. These may include fellow students who gave the subject a hard time, a college professor who gave them a bad grade, or a group of bullies. The Columbine massacre is a perfect example. Mass murderers, specifically, may include suicide bombers and other types of terrorists who commit their murders with a single act. Alternatively, either type may commit multiple murders for no apparent reason other than the desire to kill. While rampage killers usually select their victims at random, there are cases where certain aspects of the victims appeals to the perpetrator, such as age, weight, hair color, facial shape occupation, race, etc. It may be a displaced memory or the effect of a traumatic event that mostly happens in childhood. This is how criminologists usually connect different strings of murders together. Modus Operandi Unlike serial killers, spree killers most often use firearms or similar weapons. Mass murderers most often use explosives, firearms, or biological/chemical weapons in the case of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the Japanese terrorist group Aum Shinrikyo. Real Life Examples Spree Killers * Andrew Kehoe, the Bath School bomber * Charles Whitman, the Texas Tower Sniper * Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, perpetrators of the Starkweather-Fugate murder spree *Howard Barton Unruh, the schizophrenic Camden spree killer *Mark Barton, the Georgia spree killer and family annihilator *Andrew Cunanan, the San Diego spree killer *Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech spree killer *Anders Behring Breivik, the schizophrenic Norway killer *John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, the Beltway snipers *Jeff Weise, the perpetrator of the Red Lake massacre Mass Murderers *Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the Columbine killers *Timothy McVeigh, American terrorist and the Oklahoma City Bomber *Richard Speck, raped and murdered multiple nurses *Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, killed an entire family in a robbery *John List, killed several members of his family *James and John McNamara, perpetrators of the Los Angeles Times bombing *George Hennard, perpetrator of the massacre at Luby's *The Tylenol Killer, mass poisoner *George Geschwendt, family annihilator *Byran Uyesugi, perpetrator of the Xerox massacre On Criminal Minds Spree Killers *Roy Woodridge ("Distress") *Nathan Tubbs ("Doubt") *Owen Savage ("Elephant's Memory") *Norman Hill ("Normal") *Darrin Call ("Haunted") *Turner's Group ("Hopeless") *Miranda Jakar ("Outfoxed") *Dale Shrader ("Retaliation") *Bill Hodges ("Parasite") *Jeremy Sayer ("Safe Haven") *Raymond Donovan and Sydney Manning ("The Thirteenth Step") *Ben Foster ("With Friends Like These...") *Shelley Chamberlain ("Hanley Waters") *Luke Dolan ("Dorado Falls") *Jimmy Hall ("The Bittersweet Science") *Curtis Banks ("Snake Eyes") Serial killers who devolved into spree killers include: *Mark Gregory ("Charm and Harm") *The Mulford Family ("Open Season") *Jonny McHale ("True Night") *Eric Olson ("Zoe's Reprise") *Connor O'Brien ("Public Enemy") *Ronald Boyd ("A Rite of Passage") *Billy Flynn ("Our Darkest Hour" and "The Longest Night") *James Thomas ("Compromising Positions") Attempted spree killers include: *Caleb Dale Sheppard ("Psychodrama") *Henry Grace ("Masterpiece") *Patrick Meyers ("Nameless, Faceless") *Daniel Dryden ("Killer Profile") Mass Murderers *Adrian Bale ("Won't Get Fooled Again") *Cally's Tribe ("The Tribe") *Militant Islamic Society ("Lessons Learned") *George Foyet ("Omnivore", "...And Back", "Nameless, Faceless", and "100") *Tommy Wheeler ("House on Fire") *Chad Brown ("Amplification") *Randy Slade ("Painless") *Chris Shelton ("Self-Fulfilling Prophecy") Attempted mass murderers include: *David Walker ("Won't Get Fooled Again") *Phillip Dowd ("L.D.S.K.") *Ted Bryar ("Derailed") *Edward Hill ("Poison") *Robert Adams ("Painless") Mass murderers who carried out their massacres in a series of killings: *Karl Arnold ("The Fox" and "Outfoxed") *Trevor Mills ("A Thin Line") Female Rampage Killers Female rampage killers are extremely rare. In Public Enemy, however, Morgan incorrectly states that spree killers, unless they are school shooters, are always middle-aged males. Documented examples include: *Brenda Spencer: On January 29, 1979, Brenda, then 16, used a .22 rifle and fired at the staff and students of an elementary school across the street on which she lived, killing two and wounding nine. She is currently serving time in a San Diego prison and has been denied parole four times.﻿ When asked why she did it, she simply said that she doesn't like Mondays and that killing "livens up the day". *Amy Bishop: Shot six colleagues, three of which died, with a 9mm handgun February 13, 2010 shortly after learning that she had been denied tenure. She was arrested and indicted for the shooting and is currently in custody. The authorities also reopened the case of her fatally shooting her brother years earlier, an incident which previously was believed to have been an accident. In June 2010, she was charged with first-degree murder of her brother, nearly 24 years after the shooting occured. In 1993, Bishop and her husband were also suspects in a case in which a pair of pipe bombs were sent to a Harvard Medical School professor. *Jennifer San Marco: Killed a neighbor, then went to a mail processing plant, where she killed an additional six before shooting herself in the head on January 30, 2006. She was apparently motivated by severe paranoia and bigotry (San Marco was a known racist, and with the exception of neighbor Beverly Graham, all her victims were minorities). *Sylvia Seegrist: On October 30, 1985, she opened fire at a Springfield, Pennsylvania shopping mall, killing three people and wounding seven others before being disarmed by a shopper John Laufer (who mistakenly assumed Sylvia shooting to be a prank, as it was close to Halloween). The individuals killed included two men, Ernest Trout and Augustus Ferrara, and a two-year-old, Recife Cosmen. She was 25 years old and had been diagnosed as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia ten years earlier. See Also *School Shooter *Serial Killer *Family Annihilator Note *The most prolific spree killer in modern history appears to have been Anders Behring Breivik, a Norweigan man who was arrested as a suspect for a car bombing in Oslo and a mass shooting at a nearby island youth camp on July 22, 2011, both of which occurred on the same day and are believed to have claimed the lives of a total of at least 77 people, eight from the car bomb and 69 from the camp massacre. An additional 96 were injured. The incident, which has been compared to the Oklahoma City bombing committed by Timothy McVeigh in the sense that both were domestic terrorists who used explosives made from fertilizer, has been called an act of terrorism by authorities. Breivik mentions McVeigh in his diary, which was released a few days after the massacre and reveals that he first began planning his act at the beginning of 2010. He also states in the diary that his intention was to form a templar order meant to become "the foremost conservative revolutionary movement in Western Europe of the nearest decades". Though he has confessed to the massacre and the bombing, he has not admitted criminal responsibility. References *''The Serial Killer Files'' by Harold Schecter. Random House ISBN 978-0-345-46566-5 (0-345-46566-0) Category:Criminal Pathology